S. African Woman, Allegedly 122, Dies

Published 7:00 pm, Saturday, January 18, 2003

Dora Jacobs, a South African woman who claimed to have been born in 1880, died Sunday at would have been age 122, officials said.

Jacobs, who gave her birthday as May 6, 1880, was rejected by the Guinness Book of World Records as the world's oldest living person because she failed to produce three separate documents confirming her birthdate, the South African Press Association reported.

Jacobs was born in the rural Eastern Cape, an area where documentation was not always readily available in the nineteenth century.

According to Guinness, the oldest-person title belongs to Kamato Hongo of Japan, who was born on Sept. 16, 1887.

Jacobs said she never smoked or drank. She grew up on a diet that forbade the eating of eggs and included raw wild fruit and berries.

In 2000, the Eastern Cape provincial government held a celebration for her 120th birthday.